A Case of Heart Trouble Page 3

  “No, no, I haven’t had any pain,” he answered shortly. “And I’m perfectly all right.”

  “That’s splendid,” Rutherford murmured, helping himself to a cucumber sandwich after offering the plate to Dallas. “I’ve been meaning to look in on

  you for some time,” he explained to his cousin. “Once I heard you were back, that is. But Aunt Letty, when I met her in the village, said you weren’t up to receiving visitors. She seemed to think that even relatives would be more popular if they waited until they received some intimation that their presence was desired at Loring Court.”

  And his handsome dark eyes seemed to develop an ironic sparkle, as if only he and Aunt Letty—and Martin—would have the least idea of what he meant by that.

  Martin ignored his cup of tea when Dallas had poured it out— Aunt Letty was attending a meeting of the Women’s Institute, at the village hall, and she was deputizing for her—and he refused to have anything to eat. While his cousin polished off cucumber sandwich after cucumber sandwich, and then had two slices of chocolate cake, he seemed to be making an almost superhuman effort to appear as if he didn’t bitterly resent his intrusion; and, but for the fact that he was incapacitated, and very possibly hadn’t the strength, would have picked him up by the scuff of the neck and flung him out of the house.

  Dallas was appalled because she seemed to have blundered badly when she gave this young man the opportunity to drive her home. And he looked such a very harmless young man—apart from the fact that he was almost devastatingly handsome, with the same arrogantly held head as the elder Loring, the same graceful, elegant figure, and casual, provocative speech. He was wearing well-cut tweeds, and he admitted that he had been buying a horse that afternoon. Apparently he ran a local riding stables, and in addition he had once practised as a veterinary surgeon.

  “You look as if you could do with a month in the South of France,” he remarked to Martin. “Why on earth did you decide to come back here to Loring to recuperate? It’s dull enough at the best of times, but when you’re laid up . . .” He glanced sideways at Dallas, and smiled. “But of course, you have got a pretty nurse to look after you, haven’t you? That's some compensation! I wouldn't mind having an argument with a taxi myself if it meant that Nurse Drew would take charge of me!”

  Dallas got up and moved nearer to the tea- trolley. Once more she attempted to coax her patient to eat.

  “Have one of Mrs. Baxter's macaroons,” she almost pleaded. “Please leave me alone,” he requested. And then, to Rutherford: “I'm sure you have some very urgent business elsewhere, Brent. I wouldn't wish to interfere with it, so please don't let us detain you. And don't think it necessary to call here often in order to make enquiries after my health, will you?”

  Brent smiled again—just a trifle less pleasantly this time.

  “Okay, old boy, I get you perfectly,” he returned. “But there's no need to resent cousinly enquiries. And I wasn't on my way here this afternoon, you know, when I ran into Miss Drew! ”

  He wiped his fingers on a large pocket handkerchief, asked with disarming sweetness if he could have a second cup of tea, drained it, glanced at the clock, and then said that he supposed he really would have to be going.

  “Don't disturb yourself, Martin, old boy.” Martin had no intention of disturbing himself, and pretended not to see the hand that was held out to him. “I'm sure I hope you'll soon be getting about— even if it's only on crutches! And thank Mrs. Baxter for an excellent tea,” smiling at Dallas.

  She wondered whether she ought to see him off the premises, and being in his debt to a certain extent for the drive home decided that the very least she could do was accompany him into the hall . . . even if her employer reproved her for it afterwards. And when Brent realized her intention he nodded approvingly.

  “I'd like to have a word with you, Nurse, if you don't mind.” Outside, in the hall, with the front door standing wide and scraps of withered autumn leaves finding

  their way into the house and lying like golden offerings on the polished boards of the hall, he looked down at the top of a suede shoe and asked suddenly: “How do you find your patient, Nurse? Is he really making progress? He looks a bit sickly to me” “Dr. Loring is making very good progress,” she replied, wishing that instead of a tweed skirt and a bright sweater she was wearing her crisp green and

  white uniform to lend her dignity.

  One side of his mouth quirked upwards.

  “Well, you should know. Although you look a bit young to me to be in attendance on the august Dr. Loring . . . Harley Street, and all the rest! However, I’m delighted to have met you, Nurse, and I hope we meet again soon. Any time you feel like seeing something of the surrounding country, my car is at your disposal, just give me a ring! My number is in the book.”

  He went running lightly down the front steps to the drive, and Mrs. Baxter, the housekeeper, emerged from the kitchen quarters that were shut off from the rest of the house by a green baize door, and looked at Dallas as if she had been expecting something in the nature of a minor explosion while the visitor was in the house.

  “So Mr. Rutherford has just left, has he?” she said. “It’s a lucky thing for him that Mrs. Loring wasn’t at home.”

  “Why?” Dallas asked curiously.

  Mrs. Baxter looked at her with a world of meaning in her eyes, which, however, she was not at liberty to elaborate on.

  “It’s not for me to say, Nurse,” she replied. “But I can tell you that Mr. Rutherford is far from welcome here at Loring Court. I don’t think I’d mention his visit to Mrs. Loring, if I were you.”

  That night Martin insisted on staying up for dinner, and he also insisted on putting on a dinner jacket for the occasion. It was the first time Dallas had seen him wearing formal clothes for the evening, and she thought he looked almost painfully attractive with his dark hair well brushed, beautifully shaved and groomed, and at the same time unable to conceal the slight pallor of convalescence and the faint smudges under his eyes that were also an indication that he was not yet a well man.

  She thought he also looked a trifle grim when she went in to help him with the final details of his toilet—and, being only twenty-one, and a not very experienced nurse, she sometimes felt almost over-poweringly shy as a result of their enforced intimacy —and not in what she would have described as one of his sunniest moods. She was still wearing her uniform, and he regarded it with a bleak look.

  “You’re going to change, Nurse?” Sometimes he called her Nurse, sometimes Dallas. “I wouldn’t like to think I’ve gone to all this trouble to sit confronting you in that starched outfit.”

  “Of course. But I want to see you downstairs first. You can have a drink with your aunt while you’re waiting for me to join you.”

  “One drink? I’ll have a couple with my aunt, and another

  couple when you join us.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she said gently, slipping her hand quite naturally inside his arm and leading him over to the door.

  “I’m not silly.” His voice was grim, his eyes over-bright with frustration. “I want to feel completely fit again, not to go on like this. I’m tired of being an invalid. I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to become my own man again within the next fortnight or so even if it—it kills me!”

  He grinned a little as he made the announcement, and amended it slightly.

  “The effort, I mean!”

  “Well, that’s wonderful,” she declared, removing a scrap of fluff from the front of his dinner jacket with a lightly varnished finger-tip. “As a matter of fact, I think you can do it if you put your mind to it. The will to get well is nine-tenths of the battle, as you, as a doctor, should know.”

  “I, as a doctor, know a lot of things that you— Miss Twenty-one-year-old!—don’t know,” he said, looking down into her green eyes as if they were clear green lakes in which he could see his own reflection. “And in future I’m going to accompany you on your walks—or have a shot at i
t!—take you for drives in the car. That sort of thing.”

  “When you’re fit enough to do the sort of walk I did this afternoon I’ll have to return to London,” she said quietly. “But it will be a good thing to begin on walks in the grounds. And a daily drive would be a diversion for you.”

  He frowned.

  “Don’t talk about returning to London. If you’re going to start doing that you’ll retard my progress. I’ll think about taking to my bed again.” She realized that he was in a difficult mood, and led him to the head of the stairs. She was preparing to descend them with him, but he released himself and waved her away.

  “Go and get changed, woman, and don’t keep my aunt and me waiting! And, before I forget to issue the warning, don’t let that cousin of mine make a habit of offering you lifts. He’ll waylay you at every turn, if you do. And that is something I can’t and won’t permit.”

  She decided that this was her opportunity to apologize for her mistake of the afternoon.

  “I didn’t realize he wasn’t a welcome visitor here,” she said.

  “He’ll never be a welcome visitor here,” Dr. Loring returned with a quality of grimness that startled her, and went on his careful way down the stairs.

  C H A P T E R F O U R

  FOR the next week he could not have been more cooperative when she tried to get him to take air and exercise.

  Fortunately, the fine September weather held, and there was every excuse for being out of doors. They had lunch on the terrace and tea on the lawn, and in between necessary periods for rest they strolled about the extensive grounds, and even ventured into the lanes surrounding the house, where the autumn colors were at their best, and the vaguely exciting scents of autumn seemed to press upon them.

  Occasionally they went for a drive in the chauffeur-driven car, and sometimes Aunt Letty accompanied them. She infuriated her nephew by requesting to be set down at a wool shop, or a shop where they sold rich gateaux, in the little market town, and although by this time Dallas was finding her a very companionable person indeed, and rather enjoyed the pleasant inertia of her mind which resulted from the fact that she was definitely overweight, disliked any form of exercise and was devoted to the pleasures of the table, he never ceased to take her to task for the lack of will which prevented her reducing her weight, or caused her to look upon motivation other than in a car as a kind of penance.

  “I know I’m fat, and I shall continue to be fat,” she declared comfortably, when he asked her how closely she was sticking to the diet sheet he had drawn up for her. “It’s my nature to be fat, just as it’s yours to be thin and bad-tempered and a trifle insufferable at times.”

  She glanced at the handsome, silver-framed photograph of Maureen, his wife—which she declined to have banished from the piano top, although any direct reference to her in conversation was apparently either strongly forbidden, or tactfully excluded—and Dallas wondered whether (having heard how he had referred to his own photograph upstairs) the absent Mrs. Martin Loring had some justification for her continued absence, and that “slightly insufferable” temperament of her husband’s had been more than she could put up with after a few years of marriage.

  Not that nowadays he was at all insufferable. As the pain in his leg lessened, and his strength flowed back to him, he was occasionally almost sunny- tempered, and his dry sense of humor appealed to Dallas. She would catch him watching her in the evenings, when they all three sat in the drawing-room after dinner, the lights were glowing softly, and she was wearing one of her two off-duty dresses that were suitable for that hour of the day. .

  One was of dull gold silk that lent her an all-over golden appearance; the other was the black cocktail dress. Whichever she wore, she looked extremely feminine, too young to be responsible for a man so many years older than herself, and quite incapable of subduing him if it was necessary for him to be subdued. ... Or so Aunt Letty secretly thought a little anxiously sometimes.

  Martin, the good-looking owner of Loring Court, with the added allure of a doctor who had reached a considerably high eminence, had formed a habit of sitting watching her as if she intrigued him. Everything she did—whether it was holding a skein of knitting wool for Mrs. Loring, fetching the chess pieces from the inlaid cabinet in which they were kept, or simply concentrating on a book she held in her hand— seemed to hold for him some acute form of interest that he made not the slightest attempt to conceal. And sometimes Dallas herself was embarrassed by it, glad when Mrs. Loring said something that distracted his attention, or provided her with an excuse to leave the room.

  But always, when she returned, he was waiting for her. If she had been away for some little while— writing a letter in her room, or attending to some other small personal matter that had to be fitted in when she could spare the time—he would frown and glance at his watch, compare it with the clock on the mantelpiece, and demand to know why she had absented herself for so long.

  “Are you bored, Nurse? Say the word, and we’ll install a television set . . . although personally I can’t stand that sort of entertainment. Or shall we play three-handed whist? Drop that confounded knitting, Aunt Letty, and find us a pack of cards.” But Aunt Letty would continue knitting complacently, and remind him that he and Nurse Drew had had a very long session at piquet already that evening.

  “Do leave her alone, please,” she begged, more than once. “Nurse Drew is entitled to a little free time in which to do as she pleases.”

  Awkwardly, he would glance across at Dallas, elevate his eyebrows, regard her with a faintly quizzical gleam in his eyes.

  “But you went for a stroll this afternoon while I was dozing on the library sofa,” he would remind her. Or, “You went shopping for Aunt Letty this morning, and I’m sure you did a little on your own account while you had the chance. That is time off. The evening is the awkward part of the day when I wish to be entertained, and I look to you to supply the entertainment.”

  Audaciously he demanded, once:

  “Tell us the story of your life, Nurse Drew. I’m sure we shan’t find it boring. Tell us how many of your patients have fallen in love

  with you, and how many times you’ve fancied yourself in love with a handsome male patient! Or do you go for the Surgical Registrar? That type! Or the visiting consultants, when they’re personable enough.” “Martin!” Mrs. Loring exclaimed, as if she was really shocked. But he merely grinned impishly, and looked quite impenitent.

  “We’re waiting, Nurse Drew,” he reminded her softly.

  Dallas felt as if the hot flush that had risen up in her cheeks were scorching her skin.

  “My life has been so uneventful, Doctor,” she assured him, stiffly, “that there just aren’t any highlights to entertain you with. I’m sorry, but that happens to be the plain unvarnished truth! ”

  “What, no girlish passes? No deathless moments you were certain at the time you’d never recover from?” He put his sleek head on one side, and the cool mockery in his eyes not merely disconcerted her, but made her wish suddenly and violently that she had never yielded to his insistence and accompanied him to Loring Court in the capacity of a nurse he could treat as whimsically as this. “Oh, come! I refuse to believe it, and I want to hear the truth.”

  “The truth, although it’s probably disappointed you, is what you’ve just heard,” she said.

  He lighted himself a cigarette, stretched his long, slim, elegant length out in his chair with the adjustable foot rest, and studied her through the faint haze of smoke that drifted between them.

  “You’ve never been in love?” he asked, making the word sound curiously like a caress.

  “Never,” she answered, and was glad when Mrs. Loring stood up and said that she was going to have an early night.

  “And I think you’d better allow Nurse Drew to see you settled for the night, too,” she added, with a definite hint of rebuke in both her tone and her look.

  Dallas, for the first time, felt tempted to advise her patient to s
ettle himself down for the night. He was becoming a little too dependent on her, taking advantage of her role and her uniform to an even greater extent than when he had been really ill. Then, she had occasionally had to cope with fits of independence. Now there was no independence, only an increasing tendency to look to her for all the small things he could very well do himself. Little things like insisting upon having his tie untied for him, his pyjamas handed to him. When he was in bed he liked to have his reading lamp adjusted so that he could read far into the night if he felt like it; but tonight Dallas said curtly that she thought it would be far better for him if he took his sleeping tablets and went straight off to sleep.

  He lay looking up at her with gleaming, amused grey eyes.

  “You’re angry with me, aren’t you, Dallas?” he said, softly.

  She denied it.

  “I’m simply a little tired, and I’d like to get you settled down as quickly as possible.”

  He glanced at the little travelling clock beside his bed.

  “It’s only a quarter to ten,” he said. “And what is a quarter to ten when you’re twenty-one? Or thirty-seven, if it comes to that! We ought to be dining and dancing somewhere, and having a wonderful time! Do you dance, Dallas? Of course you do! Like a feather in the breeze, unless I’m quite unfit to judge the capabilities of a goldenheaded slip of a girl like you!”

  “Will you lie down, please, Doctor,” was all Dallas replied, with uncompromising primness.

  He grimaced at her.

  “But I don’t want to lie down. It was you who were eager to rush me off to bed, not I who craved the solace of my mattress! ” Then he lay back with a sigh, and his dark head nestled into the softness of his pillow. “Oh, all right. If you’re eager to see the last of me for one day! ” His grey eyes were becoming less grey, more darkly blue, more disconcerting. “If I promise to be a good boy, and go straight off to sleep, will you kiss me goodnight, Nurse?”

  Dallas was not entirely surprised by this request, but she was so startled by it that she drew back as if he had actually reached out and tried to grab hold of her.